


The Cost of Living

by Nomus



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Dangan Ronpa Spoilers, F/F, F/M, Implied Relationships, Super Dangan Ronpa 2 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:10:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5176358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomus/pseuds/Nomus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the events of Dangan Ronpa: IF.  Mukuro Ikusaba survived her attempted murder by her own sister's hands, and now decided the best way to bring Junko true despair is to be the architect of her destruction.  The only way Mukuro knows how to bridge the vast divide between them now is through the one thing she was ever good at, and the only thing anyone ever praised her for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Cost of Living

\--Here’s to you, Junko Enoshima, the only woman I ever loved.

The taste of dust and red, wet iron filled Mukuro’s mouth; the flavor coated her tongue and ran down her chin as she was consumed by fire and blood.  The sound of twisting steel and the heat of sparks on pavement kicked up around Mukuro’s face as she pushed herself from the seat of the motorcycle as it came out from beneath her body.  She launched herself into the air with the knife she had held in her hand now between her teeth as she caught herself against the frame of the modified semi truck; the monstrosity had been painted in shades of black and white and red as it rolled down the desolate highways of a broken Tokyo.

The shattered towers of steel and glass rose from the landscape around them, jutting out from the earth like so many broken fingers extending towards the bleak, grey sky.  The disciples of despair, of her sister, covered the truck; they crawled and hopped across it as she rose up from the side.  They screamed and hollered at Mukuro from all directions, waving their weapons over their heads.  The fires from their torches reflected off of the shiny surface of their helmets; they had no faces, only the laughing expression of monobear that they each shared.  They were faceless, their lives were meaningless, and they were each rendered inert one by one as Mukuro drove her knife into their flesh.  They were just tools, and tools were so easily broken.

They, however, were not who Mukuro was after, not today.  Mukuro scarcely noticed them as their blood coated her flesh, staining her clothes.  They were her sister’s clothes; they were so fashionable and revealing; it only left more flesh to become stained red with blood.  They came at her, one by one, screaming insults and vulgarities that were lost to Mukuro in her martial trance.  She stabbed one, then slit another’s throat before hurling yet another over her shoulder and onto the blurring pavement below them.  His body was smashed to pieces and he was forgotten.  So many had already died before him that nobody was left who cared to keep track of the mountain of corpses that two sisters had left in their wake.

Mukuro forced open the door to the cabin before grabbing the driver by his collar.  She threw him down beneath the wheels, and the truck barely shifted as it crushed him beneath its weight.  Mukuro’s fingers wrapped around the wheel as she took control of the vehicle; her foot pressed onto the acceleration and the truck responded as the engine forced itself to haul the monster deeper into the pack.

Her target was now in her sights; It was the personal ride of Kazuichi Souda.  Flames were painted across the side just as flames belched out of the quad exhaust ports on either side of the raised up Cadillac; the beast had undergone such heavy modification as to render it unrecognizable.  It was reborn as something entirely new.  Mukuro raised her hand up to tug on the bellowing horn; she was taunting them, challenging them, warning them not to get in her way lest they want to end up like their broken friends whose open graves now littered the highway behind them.

“I’m going to need a barf bag.” Souda’s face was green from motion sickness.  His drive reached back and pushed the brown paper bag into his hands as Souda looked back over his shoulder.  He wanted to pull the beanie down over his eyes; the fear gripped his heart as he caught sight of that blood encrusted demon behind the wheel of his war wagon.  Souda emptied the contents of his stomach into the bag.  He wiped his lips clean, spitting out his words, “Why hasn’t someone killed that bitch yet!” He couldn’t conceal the trembling of his words as the fear welled up from his throat and the tears began to roll down his grease stained cheeks.

The taste of blood so fresh on Mukuro’s tongue, her focus on killing Souda so narrow, that she had not noticed the sounds of hammering drums and furious guitar riffs until they were all around her.  Her eyes caught against the side view mirrors the sight of Ibuki Mioda; Ibuki’s tongue extended far past her white painted lips as she raised one hand in the symbol of horns and used her other to wail against her guitar.  Ibuki’s own cadre of warriors, calling themselves Valkyries, clamored for Mukuro’s blood against the heavy drums lining the frankensteinian vehicle she was riding.

Mukuro pulled hard against the steering wheel and the black and white beast of a truck responded with bloodthirsty glee as the heavy frame smashed against one of the smaller cars.  The spikes on the hubcaps of the tires tore into theirs.  Mukuro’s nose twitched at the smell of burning rubber and her eyes narrowed at the sounds of screams that were so quickly snuffed out by the sound of steel grinding against steel.

“The soldier girl is Ibuki’s!” Ibuki chimed out over the wailing of her guitar; Ibuki’s voice was that of a shrieking harpy.  Ibuki’s warriors shrieked with her as they raised their clubs into the air; each of them ready to die bloody.  Their hair was long, unkempt and dyed in unnatural shades; their choice in uniform was fishnets and leather.  Some wore pauldrons covered in spikes and painted their flesh the pallid shades of death.  

The mountain of amps and speakers on wheels pulled in behind Mukuro and out of her sight, but she knew what was happening now.  Ibuki’s warriors had leaped onto the back of the war wagon; they were shrieking and growling their dark hymns at her over the sound of the roaring engine.  Mukuro counted herself as lucky then; today was the day that two of her sister’s lieutenants came at her all at once.  It was going to save her the trouble of tracking them down later.

The shrieking was above Mukuro now and the first casualty waiting to happen came crashing down on her windshield; the girl smashed against it with her wooden club, cracking the glass frame.  Mukuro, with a frown covering her face, slammed her fist through the safety glass before the she could pull back for her next swing.  Her fingers wrapped around her wrist and pulled her back through the shattered windshield into the cabin.  Mukuro’s elbow cracked against her arm, breaking the bone.  The warrior cried out in agony as Mukuro sank her knife into the back of her throat, severing the spinal cord below her skull with a single swift stroke.  The valkyrie cried no more.

“Ikusaba!  Fight me!” One of Souda’s mechanics was howling in wild fury as he hurled a molotov cocktail across the hood of Mukuro’s truck.  The flames danced in Mukuro’s eyes even as she shielded herself from the heat with the back of her arm.  Mukuro pulled her arm back, jerking on the wheel as she rammed the front of her truck into the back of one of their cars.  The car’s massive back wheels kicked up as it swerved from the force of the fishtail.  It spun out, covered in mechanics, into the oncoming vehicles to the side of the war wagon.  Mukuro only heard the carnage of cars crashing against each other; the bodies of their passengers spilled out into the pavement at eighty miles per hour.

“Show me what a warrior’s death looks like!” One of Ibuki’s shrieking valkyries jumped down onto the hood to replace her fallen sister; she swung her legs into the driver’s compartment.  Mukuro caught her around her ankles and held her back as she grit her teeth.  The valkyrie’s cackling filled the cabin as she jerked her calves around Mukuro’s throat.  Mukuro sliced across the flesh of her thigh; she watched as it split open at the edge of her knife.  Blood spurted from the wound, and Mukuro knew then that she had severed the artery.

Mukuro watched the life bleed out of the valkyrie onto the leather seats before she felt the sudden drop of the war wagon as the tires blew out somewhere behind her.  Ibuki thrashed her head from atop the base of amps as she spouted lyrics incomprehensible above the sounds of the engines and metal.  Around her, the valkyries were hanging from the sides of the amps as they lobbed spears into Mukuro’s tires, tearing them apart.  The truck began to drag and Mukuro was forced to compensate amidst the rampaging disciples of despair around her.

“There… the Rainbow Bridge.” Souda groaned as he lifted his face from the brown paper bag.  “Take it, we’ll finish her there.”  Souda reclined across the back seat of his personal ride, the rocking of the cabin and the rumbling of the engine had made him sicker still.  The swaying of the suspension bridge helped him none at all.

Tokyo bay was filled with broken ships sunk halfway into the harbor piercing haphazardly through the waterline with enough bloated bodies to match their numbers.  The bridge was paved with the bones of those who had tried to cross it in the days following the fall.  The ruined structure was barely held together even now.  Lack of maintenance and the purposeful vandalism had made certain of that.  The roar of thundering automobiles across the bridge was enough now to begin shaking the remaining suspension cables apart.

“Ram the soldier girl!  Send her toppling, Ibuki wants to hear the sweet song of her death!” Ibuki fell to her knees as her valkyries did as they were commanded.  Mukuro felt herself losing control over the war wagon as the truck’s cabin began to jackknife as she swerved and skidded across the bridge.  Mukuro felt her heart rate spike as the truck and trailer’s weight shifted and she went into a roll.  There was nothing she could do now but brace herself as the war wagon was sent into a roll at eighty miles an hour across what remained of the Rainbow Bridge.  Dust filled her lungs as the corpses in the cabin rolled with her.  One of them was hurled out of where the windshield once was by sheer force of it all; her remains were smashed to pieces across the pavement beneath the war wagon.

Mukuro blacked out for only a second as the wreckage of the truck came a halt in the center of the bridge.  Her skin was caked in dirt and blood and gore as she crawled out of the shattered windshield and onto the glass covered pavement.  Every inch of her body was racked with pain as she made it some fifty feet from her vehicle before she heard the sounds of a screeching guitar once again fill her ears.

“Ibuki wishes she had brought her recording equipment, Mukuro!  Mukuro’s screams would have sounded great on Ibuki’s next album!” Ibuki swayed her hips as she towered over Mukuro, “Look for it in stores soon everyone!” Ibuki announced to nobody in particular as she stuck her tongue out and posed.  Around her the swarms of valkyries climbed over the rounded trailer of the truck.

There was a smell that hit Mukuro’s nose over the aroma of death and blood; it was gasoline.  A stream of gasoline began to trickle past Mukuro; she followed the trail with her eyes.  A wide gash had formed along the side of the trailer, spilling forth it’s contents onto the bridge.  Mukuro reached into the black, lacy bra her sister had forced on her and she felt the cold metal of her lighter between her fingers.  

A single, small flame sparked from the lighter and for a moment Mukuro saw her own reflection in the polished metal frame.  With a single flame she ignited the gasoline and with a single flame she made sure the last thing Ibuki Mioda ever saw was the cold gaze of the Ultimate Soldier staring at her from below on the pavement.  Ibuki opened her mouth to speak, or perhaps to scream, before she was vaporized by the white flames erupting beneath her feet.

The bridge rocked and let out an echoing shudder as suspension cables snapped.  The pavement was coated in fire and steel wreckage as the bridge sang its swan song and began to collapse, leaving only half of the bridge remaining as Souda’s warband was plunged into the pitch black depths below.  Souda’s ride rolled to a stop at the edge of the flames; debris rained down from above as he lifted his head out from the back of the car.  

“Was that it?  Is she dead?” An icy chill ran down Souda’s spine as the flames seemed to part ways for the shadow of a figure.  Souda let out a simmering whine as tears flowed from his eyes; he clutched at his beanie and pulled it down over his face as he hid from her sight.

Mukuro emerged from the flames; her flesh was caked in blood that was not her own and in her right hand she clutched the scorched clean skull of the Ultimate Musician.  With a steady pace she marched towards Souda’s vehicle with only the slightest tinge of a frown marking any expression upon her face.

“Drive!  Drive!” Souda screamed as he kicked the back of his driver’s chair.  The driver began to restart the engine but was cut off as a glint of steel, the blade of a throwing knife, lodged itself between his eyes.  His blood marked Souda for death as it spattered across the Ultimate Mechanic’s face.  A shrill cry for mercy escape his lips as he fell from the back of his car onto the pavement below.  He crawled as his feet failed him and was only met with the bloody calves of Mukuro Ikusaba as she looked down at her prey.

Souda fell back onto his ass; he shielded his face from the shadow of the Ultimate Soldier as she clutched the skull in her hand.  “Wait!  Mukuro!  Is this because I kept calling you late at night?  I’ll stop bothering you, just let me go!”  Souda’s pleas fell on deaf ears as Mukuro took him by the collar and raised the skull above her head.

With a sickening crack she brought Ibuki’s skull down on Souda’s face; his nose was smashed into his skull and blood ran down his face.  He let out a single yelp like that of a beaten animal as he flailed out with his arms to push back at Mukuro, but even as his blood dripped down onto the pavement she held him down at her mercy.  Mukuro Ikusaba had no mercy.

With another crack she brought the skull down against Souda’s face again and again.  Each time his body twitched and his limbs flailed with lessening strength after each blow.  His face became unidentifiable mush as his skull caved in, but Mukuro continued her onslaught until the skull in her hand shattered and her her fists struck the pavement beneath.

Souda’s blood ran down her knuckles as she released the shattered fragments of skull from her grip.  Mukuro removed a small notebook from her pockets; the blood smeared across its cover as she opened it up.  On it were a list of fifteen names; each one of them were the names of someone important to her sister’s plans.  She took the cap of her pen into her mouth before marking through the names of Ibuki Mioda and Souda Kazuichi.

Mukuro pulled the corpse of the driver down onto the pavement with a heavy thud as his body hit the ground.  She stepped over him and climbed into the driver’s seat as she started the vehicle once again.  She pushed her foot down the pedal leaving behind a trail of fire and carnage in her wake.

“Forgive me, Naegi.  I am the devil.”

 

 


	2. And Then There Was Silence

“We’ve been tracking her movements since Hope’s Peak reopened.”

“And the other students?”

“All extracted safely, sir.”

“Good, I want all remaining JSDF assets withdrawn from her sector.”

“But sir-”

“Do it... we’ll let them kill each other.”

The aging Future Foundation commander lit his cigar in the smoke filled command center; the glowing blue of the monitors surrounding him as he waved off his subordinate.  On them he watched the ruin left in the path of Mukuro Ikusaba, classified by Hope’s Peak talent scouts as the Ultimate Soldier.  The photographs, taken by what remained of the JSDF recon units, showed him a stark contrast of between her and normal soldiers.  Wherever she went, her objective was completed no matter what opposition stood in her path or what she had to destroy to do it.  She was exactly how he remembered her.

“And they keep saying it was her that saved them?”

“Well, one of them does, Naegi Makoto.  The rest of them seem unsure.”

“I want a psyche evaluation done on all of them, who knows what those sisters did to them in there.”

“Sir, you knew her didn’t you?”

The commander looked at the tattoo etched into the back of his right hand.  He frowned as he looked back down on it with his one remaining eye.  He reached up, touching the cheek below his eyepatch before looking towards his subordinate.

“Taught her everything I know.  Now make sure those JSDF assets are gone, we can’t afford to lose them.”

He placed his hands down as he looked over Mukuro’s projected path, heading directly towards Koshien Stadium and leaving a trail of corpses in her path.

“Mukuro, what the hell are you doing…” He muttered to himself as he took one long drag from the cigar; the light burning in the darkness of the war room.  A single image of Mukuro Ikusaba standing over the corpse of Kazuichi Souda, her hands coated in blood, fluttered across the viewscreen.

The city of Tokyo had fallen into an eternal slumber; the city streets and towering skyscrapers lit up no longer.  The sky was filled with stars over Tokyo for the first time in years uncounted, and Mukuro found herself filled with a somber sense of peace for the first time in as long a while as she could remember as she sat behind the steering wheel of the captured car.  The road map lay unfolded in the seat beside her, and the Koshien Stadium was circled in a bright, red marker.

The city street was cast in shadow and Mukuro dared not turn on the headlights as she navigated the darkness of Tokyo.  The streets were littered in bodies and burnt out husks of cars filled with the dead.  None of these sights were foreign to Mukuro, they were a sight like coming home after a long time spent away.  It was here that she felt more at home than she ever had at Hope’s Peak… except…

There was always one exception.  One exception in the boy who smiled, the only person who had ever smiled at Mukuro, for Mukuro.  It was for him that Mukuro was doing this now, at least that’s what she told herself.  Mukuro had spent her whole life following orders that now she only knew how to do things for others.  It had been true when she joined Fenrir, it was true when she was reunited with her sister, and it was true now.  Mukuro was a grunt, always on a mission, always after the objective.  The only objective now was to destroy that which had destroyed the world.  Her objective now was to create oblivion; a vacuum from which anyone could create any world they wanted.  Mukuro was going to create a world for her and for Naegi.

Mukuro was brought back to the days at Hope’s Peak when the sky was still blue, before all these things that she had done had transformed the horizon into a permanent shade of blood and ash.  The regret, the despair of having never told Naegi how she felt wracked deep in the confines of her heart.  The hope that she could be with him after this was all done was fleeting.  Mukuro Ikusaba was an enemy of the entire world and after this was all said and done she would be the only one left.  It didn’t matter how many other enemies of the world she killed, her sins would never be burned away.  The blood on her hands would never be washed clean.

Mukuro pulled the car into a sudden stop as she glanced to the side of the road.  An army humvee was crashed against the wall and several bodies hung out, mutilated, no doubt by disciple of despair.  Mukuro dismounted her vehicle, keeping her knife clutched in hand as she approached.  Their gear was still intact on the bodies and splayed across the ground.  Mukuro crouched low as she examined the bodies, it wouldn’t have been the first time the enemy had booby-trapped corpses and weapons laying on the ground.  There was nothing, it was safe.

Mukuro took into her hands the rifle, dropping out the magazine to check the ammunition.  Whoever killed these soldiers hadn’t taken anything with them.  Mukuro took their sidearm too.  The grip of the weapons felt comfortable in her hands; Mukuro Ikusaba was in her element once again.  Again, she felt like a warrior, armed for conquest.

She loaded herself with as much ammunition as she could carry; taking grenades, claymores, C4, and a single M72 LAW.  She continued driving through the darkness of Tokyo, led only by the lights of the stadium ahead.  She took one last look at her notebook.  Her targets were Owari Akane and Nekomaru Nidai.  They were last seen together inside of this stadium and Mukuro had no doubt that Nidai himself had trained a team capable of inflicting coordinated despair on an elite level.

Mukuro moved in silence, weapon raised as she crossed through the shadows cast by the moonlight shining against the pillars that held the stadium up.  She had expected resistance and instead had met none, not a soul lurked beneath the stands and not a sound leaked in from the field.  The only thing that greeted her here was the scattered garbage and debris leftover from the games once played here.

The field was empty for all but a single finger hunched down in the center of the baseball diamond, lingering in the shadows with her hands over her face.  The finger was shrouded in the shadows, but even so, Mukuro could make out her emaciated form and her unkempt head of hair that seemed to writhe out in all directions.  The faint echoes of her sobs reached Mukuro’s ears as she raised her rifle up, zeroing her sights over her center mass as she watched and waited.

There was hesitation in Mukuro’s trigger finger that night as it loosened instead of squeezed.  She lowered her weapon and took another look at the figure.  A quiet frown formed on her lips as she began a calm approach towards the back of the girl.  Mukuro stopped five feet from the girl and she recognized her.  Mukuro realized too late that she had come too close as Akane rose from the ground and lunged towards Mukuro before she had a chance to raise her weapon.

Akane swung her arms with wild ferocity.  Her nails had been sharpened like claws and had Mukuro not stepped back her flesh would have been rended open by the her savage blows.  Akane howled as though she was a wild animal and it was then that Mukuro caught her first clear look at Akane’s face in the darkness.  The moonlight glistened from the tears that streamed down her face and her eyes were bloodshot, almost glowing red against the shadow of her face.

Mukuro darted back and forth as she weaved between the blows that cut through the air around her.  Each strike drew closer to cutting across Mukuro’s flesh as she backed up from the animal mad woman.  She raised her rifle and squeezed the trigger, but Mukuro wasn’t fast enough as one of Akane’s swings knocked the weapon away.  The ricochet of the bullet could be heard as it struck one of the seats far above them in the stadium.  

Akane swung again, but this time Mukuro caught her by her wrist.  Mukuro tightened her grip; she twisted her hand as she drew her knife.  Mukuro cut the blade across Akane’s stomach once; she raked the blade and drew blood from her shallow stomach.  Akane did not give Mukuro a chance to wound her again as she locked her hand on Mukuro’s wrist.  Akane clenched down with her grip and pushed back against Mukuro’s blade.

Both women remained locked in place; both of them struggling against one another’s strength.  Mukuro grit her teeth together as she buckled down against the dirt beneath her feet.  Akane pushed her weight down against the strength of the smaller woman; against the strength of the ultimate soldier.  The tears never stopped flowing from Akane’s cheeks, which Mukuro only now noticed were caked with blood long dried and encrusted against her flesh.

“You… You made me do this!” She snapped and growled down at Mukuro as her limbs locked.  Akane lowered her gaze as she locked eyes with Mukuro.

As Mukuro saw those cold, dark eyes staring into her own she realized what Akane was talking about.  She realized then whose blood covered Akane’s face and what she and her sister had made Akane do.  What they had driven her to do was the most despair inducing thing that anyone could have done to Akane, or better put, what Akane could have done to herself.

Mukuro stared into Akane’s eyes and saw the eyes of seven dead children staring back.

Mukuro had seen those eyes before; she had seen them on the faces of soldiers who had done something so horrible that they themselves had died committing the act.  Yet their bodies continued living even though their souls had fled, unable to live with the despair of what they had done.  It was a sight that was common in this world that her sister had created; a world that Junko could not have created without Mukuro’s help.

Mukuro wrenched her wrist free from Akane and drove the glinting blade of her combat knife deep into the heart of the beast.  Blood spurted from between Akane’s teeth and spattered Mukuro’s cheeks with red spots.  Akane’s arms fell loose to her side as her damaged heart stopped beating.  Akane stared into the black nothingness that was enveloping her mind and the tears finally stopped flowing as Mukuro let Akane’s body fall into the dirt.  Her blood drained around her in a pool of wet crimson, staining Mukuro’s boots.

The lights of the stadium flickered on with the loud slamming sound that accompanied them.  The light shone down on Mukuro’s work, and she ran the blade of her knife against her skirt to wipe the blood clean.  Her bloody work remained still at her feet aside from the occasional twitch of Akane’s muscles as her brain reached those final stages of death.

This was the part where a team trained by Nekomaru Nidai would have jumped her from the stands, having been laying in ambush this whole time.  Mukuro would fight them with gun and knife as they came at her from multiple angles.  The stadium would have been a sea of blood and carnage and gore as Mukuro Ikusaba tore through her enemies one by one.  

None of this happened and only a small voice came over the sound system.

“Mukuro, it's good to see you.  I’d come down myself, but I’m afraid moving is hard for me right now.  Go ahead and come up to the press box.” The voice belonged to Nidai, but his demeanor was calm and even quiet compared to how Mukuro remembered him.

Mukuro took her rifle in hand and moved up the steps through the stadium.  She cleared every corner with swift, unending movement.  Her footsteps made not a sound as her boots moved across the concrete floors of the stadium.  The door to the press box was before her now, and Mukuro placed her hand against it.  It could have been trapped.  A single explosive designed to take out the entire box as soon as the door was opened.  A dozen men with weapons trained on the door could have been standing on the other side ready to fill her with holes.

None of this happened.  The only thing Mukuro found on the other side of that threshold was a man who had clearly been a giant at one point but now lay withered away beneath the sheets of his hospital bed.  The heart monitor let out its rhythmic beep with every step Mukuro made towards the bed; her weapon now at her side.

“You’re here to kill me then.  Better this way than my heart giving out!” Nidai laughed as best he could.  Mukuro noticed then how pale his flesh had become, like someone had drained all the blood from him.  “I can’t even take a proper shit anymore, this is no way to live.” He wore a smirk across his lips as though nothing were wrong at all.  For just a moment, Mukuro believed him and now she understood the power of the ultimate team manager.

“That’s right.” Mukuro nodded as her grip tightened around the rifle she held in her hands.  “So…” Mukuro looked out the window of the press box, the heap of flesh that was Akane’s body was still visible.  Nidai looked out at it as well; the expression on his face never changed.  “Where is your team?”

“There are those of us that are on your side, Mukuro.” Nidai closed his eyes as he struggled to sit up in the bed.  He clenched his fist as though channeling his determination.  Nidai opened his eyes and stared into Mukuro’s.  “Those of us who want to join you in your mission… of bringing a more ultimate despair to Junko.” Nidai frowned as he laid back down, “I sent my team out to gather yours.”

A silence crept up between them, only broken by the sound of Mukuro twisted her hand against the grip of her weapon and the quiet tones of the heart monitor.

“It’s a good thing you’re killing me anyway, you killed my caretaker.” Nidai looked up at the ceiling, “And… I wouldn’t have wanted to keep her here any longer anyway.”

“Do you know where Junko is?”

“No, but you’ll find the key to all of this within Tokyo Tower.”

Mukuro gave Nidai a quiet nod as she stepped over to the glass of the press box.  The crows had picked up the scent of blood; the crows gathered around the body of the newly dead woman.  Mukuro placed her fingers against the glass and felt the icy chill of the air outside for the first time tonight.

“You don’t talk as much as I remember.”

“I left my wig in the car.”

“Ha!  Of course… I remember now how you were back then.  You look better without it.”

Mukuro pointed her rifle down at Nidai; looking at him through the sights of the weapon.  She wrapped her finger around the trigger and squeezed without another word.  The thunder of gunpowder igniting was punctuated by the sound of brass pattering against the concrete floor.  The sound echoed through the stadium, and then there was no sound at all.  Then there was silence.  

 

 


	3. Soul of Fire, Heart of Steel

 

“Young Master, Nidai and Akane were both found dead this morning.  It appears that they were killed some days before” Peko Pekoyama closed the door of the car as she sat beside Kuzuryuu.  She delivered the news with the intense stare that Kuzuryuu had grown used to seeing since they were children.  Kuzuryuu shifted in his seat, barely aware that Pekoyama was speaking to him.  Kuzuryuu was somewhere else; he was lost in thoughts that had burned a hole deep into his heart.

They Took My Sister From Me

The leather seats in the backseat of the car were especially cold this morning as they drove beneath a steel grey sky.  Pekoyama looked out of the window at the passing cityscape and then again at the other cars in the yakuza convoy driving through its ruins.  The Tokyo Tower came into view from between the buildings; it’s silhouette was marred by the massive monokuma head mounted on top.   Kuzuryuu sat crouched low in his seat; he wringed his hands together as he stared forward into the back of the driver’s seat.

“She’s being held at the old family home, they’ve been ordered not to do anything to her until after you’ve arrived.” Pekoyama’s words struck Kuzuryuu.  He sat up in his seat and said nothing to her.  Peko watched as her young master looked down at his own hands and took a deep breath.  “I thought it would be fitting to have her bound within your sister’s room.” Peko gave pause to her words as she tried to measure Kuzuryuu’s reaction, “So that she could think about what she has done.”

Kuzuryuu gave Pekoyama only a grunt in response as he placed his head upon one hand and watched the ruined buildings go by.  The silence between them drew on and on, and the pair looked out through opposite windows of the moving car.  The tortured husks of office buildings and shops lined the road on either sides of them.  Pekoyama reached out for Kuzuryuu’s hand; her rough skin touched the soft backs of his hands before he recoiled away from her.

They Took My Sister From Me

Kuzuryuu was shaking with anger as his head turned towards Pekoyama.  His round eyes buried themselves into her as the fire burning in his soul lashed out.  His anger turned into tears; they formed around the edges of his eyes.  Kuzuryuu grit his teeth and smashed his fist against the door.  Pekoyama placed her hands back against her lap as she watched out the window.  

“Peko…” Kuzuryuu said through grit teeth; his hand shook against the frame of the door as he clenched his fist with such fury that he felt the warm trickle of blood pouring out against his fingers, “Don’t touch me.”

There was a crash, and then a sound like distant thunder.  Pekoyama and Kuzuryuu were jerked to the side.  Pekoyama caught Kuzuryuu in her arms and held him close against her as the car swerved off of the road.  Pekoyama looked down as she held tight against her young master, and saw that there was blood coating his face.  It was not his own.  The windshield of the car cracked open like spider webs and a meaty chunk of the driver’s head was scattered across the backseat of the car.

“Sniper.” It was the only word Pekoyama managed to say before the car smashed against a wall.  She tightened her arms around Kuzuryuu’s chest as they tumbled forward.  Pekoyama twisted her body, and she landed first against the doorframe.  The force of the impact shattered the glass; her body cushioned the blow for Kuzuryuu.  The clinking of broken glass and metal surrounded them before being drowned out by the sound of shouting voices and gunfire.

“Young master…”

“I know!  I know!  Get off of me!”

Kuzuryuu threw Pekoyama’s arms off of his body as he sat up, kicking out the back window of the car before climbing out.  Pekoyama climbed out after him; her hand came to rest on the hilt of her sword as she drew her weapon clean from the sheath on her back.

The convoy had come to a halt in the road, and the remaining Yakuza had come under attack by a wave of monokuma helmed rabble.  They spilled out of the alleys and out of the buildings as though they had be laying in wait for them.  Pekoyama watched their coordinated assault; they jumped onto the cars and smashed their windows with pipes and clubs with no regard for their own lives.

Gunfire erupted from inside of the cars as the Yakuza soldiers spilled out to defend the head of their clan.  Kuzuryuu remained crouched down behind his own vehicle, wiping the blood from the right side of his face with a loose piece of cloth.  He drew his weapon from inside of his coat and checked the ammunition of his pistol.  Kuzuryuu moved out from behind the car as he squeezed the trigger of his pistol again and again.  

“Come on you bastards!  Fall back into the buildings on this side of the street!” Kuzuryuu commanded his Yakuza soldiers and they obeyed.  Kuzuryuu grabbed Pekoyama by her shoulder and yanked her back as he fired his weapon into the chest of one of his assailants from across the street.  Blood burst from his chest and he fell onto the pavement before Kuzuryuu and Pekoyama both ducked out of sight as the Yakuza soldiers made a fighting retreat from the exposed middle of the street.

Pekoyama followed after Kuzuryuu as they sprinted through the darkness of the structure.  The ruined interior surrounded them and dulled the sounds of gunfire and death from outside on the street.  Kuzuryuu finally came to a stop as they reached the other side and he grasped his knees as he caught his breath.

“The family home is five blocks to the north of here, young master.” Pekoyama said as she moved to shield Kuzuryuu’s body with her own.  “They are moving to surround us, but I can cut a path through them.” She closed her eyes with a nod.

Her words were lost on Kuzuryuu, whose heart raced and temples throbbed as he thought about the soldiers of despair outside.  What were they trying to accomplish?  Kuzuryuu would not feel the despair of never having known vengeance; not on this day.  Kuzuryuu rose up and clutched his weapon close against his body.  The sounds of fighting mere feet away from him was drowned out by one all-consuming thought.

They Took My Sister From Me

“I’m going to kill anyone who gets in my way.”

“As you wish, young master.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Kuzuryuu kicked opened the back door of the ruined building, spilling out into the street with Pekoyama.  Kuzuryuu never let up on the trigger of his weapon, firing again and again as more soldiers of despair flooded into the street.  The muzzle flash gave light to Kuzuryuu’s face, drawing sharp shadows across his soft features.

The pair cut a swath through the enemy as they cut across the street.  Pekoyama’s blade was wet with the blood of her enemy.  Inferior opponents wielding inferior weapons, and using inferior tactics as they tried to bring down a sword saint and the man she was charged with protecting.  No matter how high the cost in life rose, she would protect Kuzuryuu.

Pekoyama brought her blade upwards, cutting it through the arm of an attacker who came too close.  His arm soared through the air in front of her as he fell to the pavement, grasping at his stump in shock.  Peko’s eyes caught a glimpse of something she had not seen in a long time.  She caught a glimpse of a familiar sigil.  The emblem of a black and white star was etched into the back of his hand, but where there should have been the head of a wolf there was the head of a bear.  The head of that black and white bear Pekoyama had grown too familiar with.

“Youn- Kuzuryuu!” Pekoyama shouted as she watched Kuzuryuu leap through the broken window into the building across the street.  Pekoyama moved with great leaps and bounds as she followed him.  She swung her weapon as though it were weightless and infinitely keen; Pekoyama cut through the entire bodies of anyone who drew too near her as she gripped the severed forearm.

Pekoyama came through after Kuzuryuu, and not a drop of blood had come to touch her.  Kuzuryuu crouched down behind cover with Pekoyama as the other Yakuza fought their way into the building.  Kuzuryuu snatched the severed forearm from Pekoyama.  He grit his teeth and dug his fingers into the dead flesh before throwing it against the ground between them.

“The hell is this!?”  Kuzuryuu’s eyes became distorted and his whole body seemed to shake at the sight of this butchered sigil of Fenrir.  Pekoyama felt that unfamiliar tinge in her heart; the unshakable feeling of fear for the first time in a long while.  The sight of Kuzuryuu’s eyes as he came to the realization that today he was going to die grasped her heart with cold, iron claws.

The sudden heat of fire covered the ruined storefront as a stream of flame tore into the building.  Yakuza soldiers screamed as their bodies caught flame from the heat of the flamethrower.  Pekoyama pulled Kuzuryuu beneath her body; her hands clutched around him as she felt the flames licking against her back.  Pekoyama gave no sound, no indication, of the pain that she felt as her uniform was burned off of her back and her flesh peeled away.  

There was a gunshot beneath her and the hot shockwave of an explosion rippled through the building.  Kuzuryuu stared through Pekoyama at the burning hunk of flesh that was once their enemy.  Kuzuryuu’s hand grasped Peko’s; his fingers intertwined around hers.

“I’m not dying like this… I’m not dying here, goddammit!” Kuzuryuu lied to himself as he pulled himself up with Peko’s body as support.  Pekoyama rose to her feet and pulled Kuzuryuu deeper into the building.  The burns she suffered did nothing to slow her, or stop her from protecting Kuzuryuu.

“The guards… where are they… this place is empty.” Kuzuryuu held onto Pekoyama as they made their way through the walls surrounding his home.  Pekoyama and Kuzuryuu could both feel something following them as they carried each other into the threshold of the Kuzuryuu family home.

Through the garden they trudged with heavy footsteps as Pekoyama threw aside the old-styled sliding door.  The pair stumbled and fell to their knees together in the foyer.  The rock garden courtyard in the center of the home, and the lone figure standing inside of it, was between them and the false shelter of Kuzuryuu’s bedroom.

Pekoyama had almost mistaken the beautiful man for a woman when he pulled down his hood to reveal a thick head of wild, white hair.  On a second glance she realized his features were much sharper, almost sunken in, and his flesh was a pallid shade that should have belonged to no healthy human.  She wondered then, for a moment, if this man was the reaper himself as he sat mounted on the tallest stone in the garden.  She glanced over her shoulder and checked to see if Mukuro herself was standing behind her.

“I know you... “ Kuzuryuu placed one of his hands in his pockets as he looked down and sneered at the man standing in his courtyard.  “You’re that worthless lucky student from Hope’s Peak, Komaeda, aren’t you?” He said as he raised his gun and trained the sights on Komaeda’s head.

“You’re right, I’m worthless, but sometimes my talent comes in handy.” Komaeda turned to face the both of his esteemed peers.  No, to call them peers would be wrong, to Komaeda he stood amongst gods.  He was blessed with the luck of being able to mingle amongst them, even when they had all fallen so low.  Even when his idols had fallen into the abyss of despair they still stood as giants before him.  “Such as today, I happened to be in the area… and I get to witness her great work.”

“Fuck this.” Kuzuryuu spat out as he pulled the trigger.  The slide stuck back on his handgun and the weapon refused to fire, jamming up instead of ending the life of the Ultimate Lucky student in his courtyard.  Kuzuryuu felt like he should have expected that and lowered his weapon; he loosened his grip on it and let it fall to the ground.  The sounds of quiet footsteps came from behind him and he knew who they belonged to.  “Fuck this.”

Pekoyama’s held her blade in hand as she moved her body between Kuzuryuu and Mukuro Ikusaba.  Mukuro looked at the sword saint without a change in her expression as she stepped into the courtyard.  Her eyes looked towards Komaeda before drifting back towards Pekoyama and Kuzuryuu.  

The ash drifted down from the sky between them and Pekoyama felt the twisting agony against her back whenever a single flake fell against her burns.  Mukuro watched Pekoyama with careful calculation.  She faced a true warrior and between them she felt that killer intent that she found lacking in Akane.  Mukuro and Pekoyama both knew that today one of them was going to die, and there was no force on heaven or earth that could stop that simple fact.

It would all come down to one question; could Mukuro pull the trigger before Pekoyama reached her.  Mukuro knew that if she pulled the trigger now then Pekoyama would just move out of the way and she could reach her before she could aim and pull the trigger a second time.  Mukuro studied Pekoyama’s stance for any signs of weakness, and then she found it.  Pekoyama’s weakness stood behind her, wearing an expensive suit and staring at Mukuro as his weapon lay in the sand at his own feet.   Mukuro pulled her aim one inch in the right and squeezed the trigger.

Pekoyama’s blade flashed through the air as the world slowed down for her.  Her breath left her body and her glasses shifted against her face as she moved with speed that was only befitting of someone known as the Ultimate Swordswoman.  Her sword struck the bullet with a quiet whisper; the sound of metal on metal ignited sharply in the air as the bullet became two chunks of metal slinging through the air.  The rifle’s chamber cocked back and the ejected cartridge soared through the air past Mukuro’s face.  Pekoyama’s feet slid against the sand as she pushed her body forward towards Mukuro.  Komaeda wore a wicked grin as he watched the battle between the two talented warriors, and he watched in glee as he wondered whose hope would shine brighter.

Kuzuryuu felt the warm trickle of blood against his right cheek before he registered that everything had gone black on the right side of his vision.  One of the stray shards of the bullet had struck him in the eye; it burst on contact inside of his eye socket.  He reached up to touch the ruined remains of his right eye as he staggered back in the sand.

“Fuyuhiko!”  Pekoyama twisted her body as she heard the sounds of Kuzuryuu in pain.  Mukuro squeezed the trigger; the sound of the bullet cutting through Pekoyama’s back and exiting from the center of her stomach deafened Kuzuryuu more than the sound of the weapon that fired it.  He screamed her name but he couldn’t hear himself speaking as he watched the only thing left in this world that mattered fall into the sand; her blood staining the rock garden red as it pooled out beneath her body.

“Peko…” Kuzuryuu choked out through the taste of his own tears and blood as he watched Pekoyama writhe against the sand.  She gripped at it; taking in a handful as she looked up at the only man she had ever loved.  Pekoyama heard the footsteps of her death, approaching all too quick, behind her.

“Fuyuhiko... “ Pekoyama spit out blood on the sand as she tightened the grip on her sword.  “Please run.” She whispered as her red eyes met with Kuzuryuu’s, and with a twist of her body she hurled the handful of sand into Mukuro’s eyes.

Kuzuryuu tore through the halls of his home; his face soaked from the blood and tears mixing against his chin.  He finally understood what it meant now; he finally understood what it meant to become lost in the grasp of a despair so deep that it ate away at every piece of him.  He saw Pekoyama everywhere as he passed from room to room, and he recalled the memories that these rooms were home too.  He remembered when they got their tattoos together; how he had to hold Pekoyama’s hand and bite into a belt to keep from crying.  The only strength he ever had was derived from Pekoyama and from his little sister, and now both of those people had been torn from him.

He heard the gunshot from the rock garden and felt despair tightening its grasp around his stomach.  Kuzuryuu fell to his knees as he felt Pekoyama leaving him for the first time in his entire life.  He had only ever felt pain like this when his little sister’s body was found; her skull caved in by some worthless bitch.  His whole body ached, inside and out.  Kuzuryuu wanted to die.

Mukuro looked down at the hole she had put through Pekoyama’s skull and frowned.  Kuzuryuu was getting away, but Mukuro knew that she would be able to catch him.  She had disarmed him completely and left him running scared.  The only thing she had to deal with now was…

“Ha ha!  What a brilliant display of hope!  Your hope that you can please that awful sister of yours against her hope of saving her master!”  Komaeda held his stomach; his laughter erupted into a high pitched, wheezing cackle as he slid down from the rock he had perched himself on.  As he ran his hands over his own face, Mukuro saw the sigil he had carved into the back of his right hand.  It was a gruesome mockery of the same tattoo she had received years ago when she joined Fenrir.

“What’s my sister’s dog doing out?” Mukuro lifted Pekoyama’s katana from the ground and strapped it to herself.  Mukuro didn’t take it as a trophy, but as what it was, a tool.  Pekoyama was merely an extension of her weapon, and Mukuro told herself that this is why she had died in the dirty sand, bloody and cold.  Mukuro Ikusaba proved herself the greater warrior; her weapons were extensions of herself.  They were tools, other limbs that she could call upon to grant her superhuman powers of destruction.

“Can’t you tell?” Komaeda showed off the butchery on his hand, “I’m not your sister’s dog anymore.” He looked excited as he began walking towards Mukuro; his arms outstretched as though he were going in for a hug.

Mukuro shoved the barrel of her rifle into Komaeda’s chest; the blow knocked him into the sand next to Pekoyama.  Komaeda laughed it off as he sat up, looking down the barrel of Mukuro’s rifle as she trained it on his face.  The sound of her shifting gear filled the silence before she finally lowered her weapon and reached her hand out towards Komaeda.  Komaeda took Mukuro’s hand and lifted himself from the sand with her support.  He stood taller than the soldier girl and looked her over despite having seen her so many times before.

“He’s getting away.” Komaeda grinned as he waved his hands at both sides of himself.

“I know.” Mukuro marched into the darkness of the Kuzuryuu family home; her gloved hands gripping her weapon tight.

Kuzuryuu came stumbling into his sister’s bedroom.  Not a thing about it had changed since the day she was found dead.  Not a single thing lay out of place or added to the bedroom, nothing except for the pathetic girl laying tied up at Kuzuryuu’s feet now.  Koizumi looked up at him; dark bags had formed beneath her eyes and her face was sunken in from such exhaustion that the only response she could muster when Kuzuryuu drew his knife was to close her eyes.

He cut the ties binding her hands and feet, and he fell to his knees before her.  Koizumi rubbed her wrists and sat up as she stared at the boy whose men had brought her here.

“Just go… get the fuck out of here.” Kuzuryuu mumbled as he clenched his hands against his legs.  The absolute despair he had felt was replaced with cold, raw acceptance.  Pekoyama was dead, his little sister was dead, the entire Kuzuryuu clan was dead, and soon he would die too.  Revenge was a meaningless thing if he could not live to savor it.  “Pekoyama is dead… and I’m going to die too…  Mukuro is coming for me.”

Koizumi struck Kuzuryuu across the face; the sharp slap snapping against his cheek.  She did not know what had brought her to do that.  Something about Kuzuryuu’s words flared up something deep inside of herself.  Koizumi rose to her feet and placed her hands on her hips as she felt a drive she had not felt since before the fall.

“What kind of man are you!?” Her voice cut into Kuzuryuu; there was something about how she stood there, talking down at him, that reminded him of his little sister.  “Pekoyama died and now you’re just going to die too?  That’s pathetic, even I know that Pekoyama would have wanted you to live.  I saw how she looked at you back at Hope’s Peak.” Koizumi railed into him; her words stabbing into him like so many knives.

Kuzuryuu was left speechless as he stared upwards at Koizumi with his one, remaining eye.  His mouth hung open and for a moment it was as though he was alive once again.  Koizumi grabbed him by the hand and pulled him up from his knees.

“I… have to make amends… so I won’t let you die here.”  Koizumi wore a grimace on her face as she pulled Fuyuhiko along with her.  There was so much more she had wanted to say, but there was no time now.  Koizumi knew from the foreboding will she felt travelling through the halls of the house that they had to escape.  Koizumi pulled open the window and forced Kuzuryuu to follow her through it as the both of them fled from the house.

They had not been gone minutes before Mukuro stepped into the bedroom.  She tapped her foot as she scanned from one end of the room to the other before her eyes fell on the open window.  She checked it, touching the glass with her gloved hand as she heard Komaeda stepping through the doorway behind her.

“He got away.”

“I know.”

 

 

 


	4. Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Children make good soldiers.

Mukuro sat in the courtyard, empty save for herself, Komaeda, and the body of Peko Pekoyama.  Mukuro said nothing as she sat far from the rock garden where Pekoyama lay on her back; there was a hole in her torso and another through her forehead.  Her blood had oozed out of her body and dried brown against the white sand beneath her, but the sweet scent of death had yet to overtake the scent of sweat and fury that had surrounded her.

Mukuro cleaned her weapon in silence; laying out the pieces of her rifle in front of her as she wiped them down and maintained them with careful hands.  Her hands were rough; they were wholly different than her sister’s.  Junko’s hands were soft like velvet and delicate like silk; Mukuro wished she had those hands.

She had wished she had shared many of the traits of her twin sister, yet these thoughts had not once crept into her head until she met Makoto Naegi.  She had fallen in love from the first moment he smiled at her; it was a smile so genuine, so pure.  It was a smile worth protecting, even now, but Mukuro had seen how Naegi smiled at Junko.  It was a different sort of smile; Naegi would never have admitted it but it was a smile tainted with a tinge of lust.  Mukuro wished that Naegi smiled at her that way.

Mukuro wanted Naegi to hold her close in his heart and in his more primal, more base places.  She wanted Naegi to look at her with that tainted smile; she wanted Naegi to lust after her, to spend his nights in bed with fantasies of Mukuro burning through his mind.  She wanted to be the reason Naegi couldn’t sleep at night.  She wanted to be like Junko, or Sayaka, Aoi or even Kirigiri.  She wanted that lust to taint her; to corrupt what was once a pure instrument of destruction.

She wanted to think more of Makoto; the flush red of her cheeks burning bright.  She wanted to lose herself to fantasy, but those words continued to echo in her skull.  They drowned out all other thoughts as she placed the final piece of her weapon back in its place.

She looked up at Komaeda as he swung his legs, humming to himself as the blood from his wound dripped down the back of his hand.  He was still a child, and so was Mukuro.  Even after all she had been through, after all the death wrought by her hands and all the ruin brought by Komaeda neither of them could be called anything resembling adults.

The pain cut deep into Mukuro’s heart as she realized some truth she had always known.

Children make good soldiers.

It was six years ago and Mukuro had spent the last few months wandering east.  She wandered until she was met with sand and stone breaking from the earth.  She was of single minded intent; a child with a single goal in mind.  It was her focus that guided her and her instinct that fed her until she reached the gates of what she at the time considered heaven.  The mechanized weapons and the aroma of salt and gunpowder filled her nostrils as she raised a hand to blot out the sunlight so she could see that fabled sigil.  So she could see the head of Fenrir, the wolf who was said to mark the end of the world once it had broken free from its bonds.

Mukuro approached the first officer she saw, tugging on his sleeve and demanding to be allowed to join.  The look on his face was incredulous at first, like someone was playing a prank on him again, but he soon realized just how serious Mukuro was.  That serious face coupled with that small frame brought him to laughter.

“Get out of here, this is no place for kids.  Especially not ones as scrawny as you.” The officer said as he clutched his stomach.  His name patch read ‘Caine’ and he wore a red beret as he motioned for Mukuro to get out of his sight, but Mukuro stood her ground.  She would not be deterred.  She would not be driven away, even as she was forcibly escorted back to the main gates of the base.

Mukuro waited for days, perhaps it was weeks, the heat and exhaustion made it difficult for her to tell and the days here dragged on and on.  She survived by sneaking into the base at night, evading the Fenrir soldiers as she stole from their rations and other supplies under the icy blanket of darkness.  Not once did the thought of death occur to Mukuro, the thought that she might die here was nothing to her.  Mukuro had not come to terms yet with her own mortality, even as her mouth grew dry and her stomach empty.

Mukuro sat on her knees outside of the gates; shrouded in a linen cloak she had stolen on her way here.  It was on this final day that a man, his hair already beginning to show that dusting of grey and a rifle held in his arms, opened the gate and walked out towards her.  The officer from before, ‘Caine’, was in tow behind him.

“How long have you been out here?” The older man asked, kneeling down to look at Mukuro in the face.  Only her eyes were visible through the cloak, but even so the man could see the grim determination that fueled her.

“I don’t know.” Mukuro replied, her answer was an honest one.  She had lost track of the time she had spent outside in this desert.

“Hm… I see…” The older man had a tinge of a smile on his face as he looked down at the girl.  “I like her, she’s got gumption.”

“Sir, she’s just a child, and a tiny one at that.  The hell is she going to do around here?” Caine said, his voice was like gravel choked through the barrel of a shotgun.

Sykes looked down at Mukuro with a smirk as he kneeled back down, putting a hand on her shoulder as he looked back at Caine.  He gently rocked Mukuro’s body back and forth as though demonstrating something.  He shoved the rifle into her arms and watched with a certain pride as she held it in her arms as naturally as a fish could swim.

“A child is a very dangerous thing, Markus.  A child can still hold a gun, pull a trigger, swing a knife.  They have little attachment to their lives and they’re loyal to whoever gives them attention and food.” He stood up, taking Mukuro by the hand, his hand marked with the head of Fenrir.

“Children make good soldiers.”

Mukuro looked up at the man, he had the insignia of a Captain and of some other rank she didn’t recognize and his name patch read, ‘Sykes.’

Mukuro was shocked back to the present by the wraith-like hand of Komaeda clasping against her shoulder.  She glared back at him as she was jolted from her daydream and responded by cocking back the bolt of her weapon.

“Oh, I can’t wait to see the places you’ll take me; the hope you’ll spread from the barrel of a gun!” Komaeda smiled.  It was a wide smile; an off-center smile.  It was not the sort of smile any human should ever have.  Mukuro stood up, slinging the rifle around her shoulder as she checked her magazines and stowed everything away in their respective pouches.

“Sonia Nevermind is next.” Mukuro knew Sonia was the last capable leader they had left, with Nidai dead and Kuzuryuu on the run without an army she knew that when Sonia fell the disorganized remnants of despair would be easy targets for Mukuro to cut through on the path to her sister.  “But first…”

Mukuro stopped in place as she stood in the threshold of the Kuzuryuu estate.  She lifted a gascan she had taken from one of the cars earlier and began to spread the gasoline over the courtyard, paying special attention to Peko’s body.  Mukuro felt her stomach turn as the gasoline spilled into Pekoyama’s still open eyes.  The look of pain and shock was still plastered on her face; it was the last expression Peko would ever make.

Mukuro felt Peko’s pain until she tossed the lit match through the door behind her, setting the manor ablaze.  As the fire burned away the Kuzuryuu estate, so did it burn away the regrets that plagued Mukuro.  Mukuro could only hope that they would stay burned away, leaving only a heart filled with ashes.

The dead stay dead, but Mukuro would never die.  She was the ultimate soldier, and as the flames reflected in her eyes she felt her mortality stripped from her.  She was no longer a simple soldier, nor had she ever been such.  Mukuro was without a real army, without a uniform, without any orders to follow but her own.  Mukuro felt the eyes of her warriors on her as they watched the blaze from the cascading shadows and flickering lights in the street, their weapons in hand.

When her bullet passed through Pekoyama’s brain, at that very moment in time, Mukuro had become something more than a soldier or general.  Mukuro had become a symbol, a legend, a scion of death.  Just as the second horseman rides, Mukuro’s coming was a herald of endless war.  There was nothing she could create with these hands.  The only thing Mukuro had ever learned growing up was how to destroy, and she became impossibly good at it.  After all…

Children make good soldiers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this took forever to come out. Sorry about the wait these last seven months have been a ride, but I hope it was worth the wait. This chapter is a little weird, but it contains a lot of what I wanted to write but had a good deal of trouble finding the words for or even the structure. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope I can get more chapters out a hell of a lot faster than before.


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